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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American urban history | 3/12 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_urban_history | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T16:00:42.902054+00:00 | kb-cron |
The cities played a major role in fomenting the American Revolution, but they were hard hit during the war itself, 1775–83. They lost their main role as oceanic ports, because of the blockade by the British Navy. Furthermore, the British occupied the cities, especially New York 1776–83, as well as Boston, Philadelphia and Charleston for briefer periods. During the occupations cities were cut off from their hinterland trade and from overland communication. The British departed in 1783, they took out large numbers of wealthy merchants, resuming their business activities elsewhere in the British Empire. The older cities restored their economic basis. Growing cities included Salem, Massachusetts (which opened a new trade with China), New London, Connecticut, and especially Baltimore, Maryland. The Washington administration under the leadership of Secretary of the treasury Alexander Hamilton set up a national bank in 1791, and local banks began to flourish in all the cities. Merchant entrepreneurship flourished and was a powerful engine of prosperity in the cities. Merchants and financiers of the cities were especially sensitive to the weakness of the old Confederation system. When it came time to ratify the much stronger new Constitution in 1788, all the nation's cities, North and South, voted in favor, while the rural districts were divided. The national capital was at Philadelphia until 1800, when it was moved to Washington. Apart from the murderous Yellow Fever epidemic of 1793, which killed about 10 percent of the population, Philadelphia had a marvelous reputation as the "cleanest, best-governed, healthiest, and most elegant of American cities." Washington, built in a fever-ridden swamp with long hot miserable summers, was ranked far behind Philadelphia, although it did escape yellow fever. World peace only lasted a decade, for in 1793 a two-decade-long war between Britain and France and their allies broke out. As the leading neutral trading partner the United States did business with both sides. France resented it, and the Quasi-War of 1798–99 disrupted trade. Outraged at British impositions on American merchant ships, and sailors, the Jefferson and Madison administrations engaged in economic warfare with Britain 1807–1812, and then full-scale warfare 1812 to 1815. The result was additional serious damage to the mercantile interests. Not all was gloomy in urban history, however. Although there was relatively little immigration from Europe, the rapid expansion of settlements to the West, and the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, open up vast frontier lands. New Orleans and St. Louis joined the United States, and entirely new cities were opened in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Nashville and points west. Historian Richard Wade has emphasized the importance of the new cities in the Westward expansion in settlement of the farmlands. They were the transportation centers, and nodes for migration and financing of the westward expansion. The newly opened regions had few roads, but a very good river system in which everything flowed downstream to New Orleans. With the coming of the steamboat after 1820, it became possible to move merchandise imported from the Northeast and from Europe upstream to new settlements. The opening of the Erie Canal made Buffalo the jumping off point for the lake transportation system that made important cities out of Cleveland, Detroit, and especially Chicago.
== The first stage of rapid urban growth, 1815–1860 ==
New York, with a population of 96,000 in 1810 surged far beyond its rivals, reaching a population of 1,080,000 in 1860, compared to 566,000 in Philadelphia, 212,000 in Baltimore, 178,000 in Boston (289,000 including the Boston suburbs), and 169,000 in New Orleans. Historian Robert Albion identifies four aggressive moves by New York entrepreneurs and politicians that helped it jump to the top of American cities. It set up an auction system that efficiently and rapidly sold imported cargoes; it organized a regular transatlantic packet service to England; it built a large-scale coastwise trade, especially one that brought Southern cotton to New York for reexport to Europe; it sponsored the Erie Canal, which opened a large new market in upstate New York and the Old Northwest. The main rivals, Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, tried to compete with the Erie Canal by opening their own networks of canals and railroads; they never caught up. The opening of the Erie Canal made Buffalo the jumping off point for the lake transportation system that made important cities out of Cleveland, Detroit, and especially Chicago. Manufacturing was not a major factor in the growth of the largest cities at this point. Instead factories were chiefly being built in towns and smaller cities, especially in New England, having waterfalls or fast rivers that were harnessed to generate the power, or were closer to coal supplies, as in Pennsylvania.
=== National leadership === America's financial, business and cultural leadership, that is, literature, the arts, and the media, were concentrated in the three or four largest cities. Political leadership was never concentrated. It was divided between Washington and the state capitals, and many states deliberately moved their state capital out of their largest city, including New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois, Missouri, South Carolina, Louisiana, Texas and California. Academic and scientific leadership was weak in the United States until the late 19th century, when it began to be concentrated in universities. A few major research-oriented schools were in or close by the largest cities, such as Harvard (Boston), Columbia (New York), University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia), Johns Hopkins (Baltimore) and Chicago. However, most were located in smaller cities or large towns such as Yale in New Haven, Connecticut; Cornell in Ithaca, New York; Princeton in Princeton, New Jersey; the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor; University of Illinois in Urbana; University of Wisconsin in Madison; University of California in Berkeley, and Stanford in the village of Stanford, California.
== Civil War ==